Sunday March
4, 2012
- The interesting, very interesting Africa Debate held
in Freetown on land grabbing by multinational companies
in Africa - is it an investment opportunity that
benefits the people or is it just another exploitative
gimmick that ruins communities, the environment and
traditional way of life? Who benefits from it all? The
strange but not so surprising loud, very loud silence
from the Ernest Bai Koroma (read AFRC Mk2) apologists.

Friday February 24 was a big day
for the media, the government and the people of Sierra
Leone - for on that day the BBC World Service
was in Freetown to broadcast LIVE one of it's Africa
Debate series. It was an opportunity for all those
concerned about the issue of land being mortgaged to
multi-national companies and how this impacts on
communities and the ordinary man, woman and child. It
was quite a lively and interesting debate with
environmentalists and civil society groups on one hand
and government agents on the other hand laying out their
side of the debate on who benefits from such deals that
have seen vast tracts of land in Sierra Leone
practically given away to the industrial production of
materials that would feed the energy needs of the West.

Into this scenario came
traditional rulers, APC mouthpieces and there was even
one man who claimed to be the adviser to President
Koroma in the matter of land acquisition and benefits
for the affected communities. It was a truly defining
moment as students, interest groups and others
repeatedly claimed that while investment was good for
Sierra Leone, the way and manner in which it was done
and continues to be done was just not good enough with
Deputy Agriculture minister, one Alie Badara Mansaray
admitting that the whole process had flaws that needed
to be looked at anew. He conceded that the whole concept
being a new programme needed a review that would address
the concerns of the people affected.

What emerged from that lively
debate was that there was a lack of transparency and
consultation with the people directly affected. One
woman activist noted that in all of the arrangements,
women were kept on the sidelines and were forced to
accept the decisions of their men folk who never
consulted them noting that women who are the backbone of
subsistence farming have not been catered for and that
in all the arrangements the social and cultural impact
of land use involving rural communities where women play
a great part had not been taken into consideration.

One of the affected community
leaders stated that in a number of cases, government
officials using all the intimidating tactics at their
command would force community leaders to sign deals they
did not even understand as they were largely illiterate
but were forced to sign-up in the presence of government
ministers and officials backed by armed security forces
- the sight of which forced many of the community
leaders to sign away their lands.

The head of the Sierra Leone
Investment and Export Promotion Agency (SLIEPA), one
Patrick Caulker whose job it was to attract these
investors and whose main interest was to get lands for
their agricultural activities put up a spirited defence
as to why he was encouraging such investors to make use
of lands in Sierra Leone. He tried to convince the
audience that such ventures directly benefitted
communities, raised the money-level for government which
he claimed was good for the country as well as providing
job opportunities. He could not give figures as to the
amount government was getting, the amount that goes to
the community, nor the number of people employed
insisting that these being new ventures, it would take
some time for the true benefits to be put in figures.

He and the deputy agriculture
minister were taken to task for their lack of
transparency on land issues in Sierra Leone with the
deputy agriculture minister evoking mirth from the
audience when he kept on insisting that if people wanted
to know the details of all these land deals they should
"just walk into my office and you will find them". This
did not go down well with the audience who wanted all
these materials to be in the public domain. At one
stage, a clearly exasperated deputy agriculture minister
had to lower his defence and ask, in not so many words -
"what is the alternative, what do we do with
agriculturally productive land that has always lain
fallow?"

He was brought back on the rails
with suggestions that if the land being given out now is
agriculturally productive, why cant the government
embark on a programme that would make such land
available for the production of the staple rice and
other food crops in a country that at one stage exported
rice!!!

However it would appear that the
bee in the bonnet of the government functionaries came
in the form of
Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of theOakland Institute,
and she, according to one blog article continually
pressed the government for concrete figures on the
benefits brought to the country. "I think
there's debate ...that this kind of investment will lead
to food security, will create jobs," she said. "I would
love to hear concrete numbers – how many jobs have been
created. ...Our research shows that in Sierra Leone till
January last year (just in agriculture) over 500, 000
hectares of land were leased. I would love to know what
kind of revenue has been contributed to the national
budget and where that money is being used." No figures
were provided by the government during the debate.

Among the environmentalists
taking part in that crucial debate was one Joseph Rahall
of the Green Scenery organisation.
Joseph Rahall has been one of the enduring activists who
had always drawn the attention of various governments to
the hazards of unplanned use of land. He was among the
first to warn of the massive deforestation and land
degradation that was taking place around Freetown that
has seen forest covers depleted, catchment areas
destroyed and contributing not only to land erosion
problems but creating water deserts that are adversely
affecting the capital Freetown and its environs. Joseph
Rahall has never given up hope on the need to educate
people on the hazards of treating the environment with
contempt. He has taken his campaign to schools,
community groups and quite recently his group Green
Scenery did a write-up titled - The Socfin Land Deal Missing Out
On Best Practices - Fact-finding Mission to Malen
Chiefdom, Pujehun District, Sierra Leone.

There is something very
interesting about Socfin and others who are now been
encouraged by the government to invest in oil palm
plantations - a programme that has refused to take into
consideration the impact of commercial plantations on
communities, the environment in deals that mortgage
Sierra Leone's agriculturally and culturally productive
lands to foreign companies in fifty and more year deals.
One would not believe that given the past history of
such deals, a government in modern-day Sierra Leone
would take upon itself to give out lands, the property
of the people in such pernicious and uncaring deals.

Interesting because the oil palm
is one crop that has always been a part of the Sierra
Leone agricultural map with the country having hosted
and established WAIFOR, the West African Institute for
Oil Palm Research on the banks of the River Taia in
southern Sierra Leone. Oil palm development was
discouraged because for Siaka Stevens and his cohort,
that tree represented the SLPP and hence must be
discarded, if not destroyed.

We visited the website of SLIEPA,
thanks to Patrick Caulker's spirited defence of that
organisation's policies and we noticed a number of
materials that could have been taken straight from a
number of agricultural manuals and students of
agriculture are advised to visit with a view of doing
some research on just what could be wrong with the
pictures painted on that website. One such would be -
the impact of these deals on population growth as
brought out by Joseph Rahall in this debate.

It was on that website that we
got the names of some of the new "investors" using
agriculturally productive lands in commercial ventures.
There's

MARIKA
- Local entrepreneur took over former
state oil-crushing facility, Current oil output used
mainly for soap production, Currently buys bunches from
smallholders, and plans to develop own oil-palm estates

SIERRA LEONE AGRICULTURE
- UK-based group has signed lease for
41,000 hectares, Plans to develop 30,000 ha of oil palm,
starting with 10,000 ha estate plus 5,000 ha
smallholders, Plans to install a 30 ton per hour mill
that can be upgraded to 60 tons per hour

GOLD TREE - UK/local
group plans to install a 20 ton per hour oil mill to
process own and smallholder crop, Plans to replant and
expand old plantation at Daru and source from
smallholders in region, Planted 180 hectares of palms on
land leased from chieftaincy

QUIFEL - Portugal-based group with
operations in Portugal, Spain, Brazil, Angola, and
Mozambique, Signed agreements with local communities in
Lokomasama and Masimera; to prospect for land for rice,
oilpalm, and sugar cane; plans to focus on unmet local
demand

However what could be of
particular interest to those who are in denial is this
note on the SLIPA website aimed
at luring more of these investors to come to Sierra
Leone.

Political stability:

Sierra Leone is one of few
countries in Africa with a fully-functioning multiparty
democracy. Since 2002, free
elections have been held every 5 years; in 2007, the
governing party lost and handed over power peacefully to
the current administration under President Ernest Bai
Koroma. Both leading parties are fully committed to
democracy and a pro-business environment. Sierra Leone
has been ranked as the most improved country in Africa
in both the Mo Ibrahim Africa Governance Index and the
World Bank’s global Governance Indicators.

Peace and
security: the
country is free of any major ethnic, religious,
ideological or other disputes. Accordingto Gallup, Sierra Leone is the most
integrated and harmonious multi-faith country in the
world. Crime rates are extremely low – Freetown is the
safest capital city in Africa, and the police force is
one of few in the world that does not carry guns.

A note on that last
bit - surely on peace and security, this cannot
be the Sierra Leone that people know and experience with
the armed wing of the APC, the OSD,
using the peoples' resources as instruments of
suppression and repression.

On the whole this
debate should not be seen as an attack on the Ernest Bai
Koroma government ( hence the silence from his praise
singers) but what should have been done, peoples' open
participation before any of these deals were entered
into - more so when the general feeling was that the
beneficiaries from such deals are government agents,
their sub-agents and the land grabbing investors. The
need for consultation, transparency and consensus.